I kept trying to reply to this like 3 times at work, and it kept logging me off and shit. Dragon Age: Origins is also sitting there ready to be played, and I want to play it, so I be quick hopefully. Bioware, if you screw up DA3, I'll never forgive you...

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Originally Posted by darren316

hell portal 2 from pc gamers beloved valve was download 3.2 million time last year .. plus all the illigal copies sol in places like india which probebly puts it over 4 mill if the truth be told.

CD Projekt claim 4.5 million copies of witcher 2 are being played illigally, it SOLD apparently about 700k copies .. sorry its an undefendable joke, i'd love to know what excuse there is for this one if its true.

Bad piracy rates don't necessarily mean bad sales, or a failure of a game, and sales is all developers and publishers alike honestly care about. Like Alucard said too, PC games sell over time more than console games. But anyway, Gabe Newell has came out and said that Portal 2 did better on PC than it did on the consoles. Valve have also announced that Portal 2 sold 3 million copies across all platforms, in the 2 months of release, and that was back in June so it'll have got a lot more sales by now.

Therefore, since it did better on PC than consoles, we can estimate that PC sales were about 2million. In July, EA said 2 million retail copies were sold, and Gabe said the PC version sold better than consoles a month later in August. Console copies will have no doubt made up most of the majority of that 2 million, but because of more time that has passed and more copies sold, as well as the sales Portal 2 has had on Steam which contributed a lot and pushed it to the top seller mark, etc. I think an okay assumption is around 2 million.

So 2 million sales on PC and, looking at the list you posted, illegally downloaded 3.2million times. Atrocious stats, but, we shall soldier on regardless!

Now let's look at Crysis 2. I don't know how many sales the PC version has, but you said 500k, so let's say 500k; since the total across all platforms is only 3 million, we can assume it's around that level. Now, it was also pirated 3.9million times. So thats 500k sales, compared to 3.9mil downloads.

Portal 2: 2 million sales - 3.2 million pirate

Crysis 2: 500,000 sales - 3.9 million pirate

The difference in piracy is only (well, I say only, it's still a disgraceful amount) 700k people, but the difference in sales is considerably over 1.5 million. So bad piracy doesn't necessarily mean bad sales. Developers won't whine about piracy if their game sells well, unless they're idiotic enough to think every person who pirated would have bought the game if they couldn't have. Which is pretty unrealistic a goal.

So everything here is rough as shit, but I hope you get my drift. Good PC games sell well on PC despite the piracy. Skyrim also sold brilliantly, and if Portal 2 has sold this much, Skyrim wouldn't be that far away from it. EA can whine about BF3's piracy and PC sales, but it's their fault for putting on Origin and not putting on Steam. That did affect sales, it's obviously a given that it did. When a game caters for PC, and is very much a PC game, we all buy it! Battlefield 2 is estimated to have sold about 11 million copies right now because it catered to us. (I actually double-checked that because it sounded like an absurd amount, but yup, BF2 is up there with Sims and Half Life in sales as one of the best selling games on PC. Wow.) But then with the Origin requirements and lack of Steam, that went down the drain a bit for BF3. PC Gamers take less shit than console gamers.

The piracy rates are atrocious. Seeing those numbers is just appaling. But games do sell well on PC if you don't piss us all off. So developers with their draconian DRM who think games don't sell because of piracy, no. They sell badly because we're not console players who will buy 5 million copies of Zumba Fitness and any other shit that's thrown at us.

I'm sure people will have a fun time pointing out how I'm so wrong about everything, so enjoy. This is all quite rough working out, but all the facts I stated, like Valve saying PC version of Portal 2 sold better, 3 million sold in July, etc. are all perfectly valid and correct.

CD Projekt claim 4.5 million copies of witcher 2 are being played illigally, it SOLD apparently about 700k copies .. sorry its an undefendable joke, i'd love to know what excuse there is for this one if its true.

Yeah that's just pathetic. Since Witcher 2 is a Polish game and was advertised a lot around Poland and Russia, a country infamous for its piracy, that could explain why the game has a much higher level of piracy than other titles. Damn Russians!

But those sales figures are not correct at all, it's sold a lot more than that. The article itself says over 1 million sales were made, back in November, and it was announced in August that Witcher 2 was nearing 1 million sales, so I don't know where you got 700k from. The reality is probably around 1.2 million+ sales by now, since quite a few months have passed since it hit 1 million, PC games sell more gradually than console and, like Portal 2, it's been on a few Steam sales and hit Top Seller there. The original Witcher hasn't even surpassed 1 million sales I don't think, between both the original and Enhanced Edition, so it's not like they're well known developers either, and CD Projekt also admitted to being very happy with the number of sales.

So again, though piracy is bad, sales are still good. I don't know when 1 million sales became bad either. Dark Souls I'm pretty sure hasn't surpassed that much over 1 million, and the console market is massive compared to just the PC market.

Well CD Projekt themselves said 1 million+ so I'll take their word for it, since it agrees with most of the other statistics found elsewhere.

But 1 million+ sales in this case, obviously, isn't bad, since CD Projekt have openly said they're happy with the sales and that it surpassed their expectations. They built an entire engine for it too, and made a game which is BF3's only rival in terms of graphics, so it wasn't cheap either. They did an awesome job.

1 million sales is only bad for companies who spend millions and millions on advertising and such, such as BF3. For a relatively unknown dev with their second game as a PC exclusive, 1 million sales is very good.

Guess I'll have to agree with KingOfSentinels here. PC developers need to treat their fan-base with respect. There's a group of people out there who will pirate software regradless of whatever DRM protection or online scheme is employed, so it's quite pointless to take it out on everyone else. Video gaming is a huge business and you take the good with the bad. Same goes for music artists, movie creators, book writers, software makers, et al. If you have what it takes to compete in the market by offering up quality products to meet demand, people will come. However, don't expect staggering sales figures when you take measures which alienate/frustrate potential consumers. In short, don't take gamers for granted.